SnapServer Claims New Storage Appliance Needs No Provisioning

Overland Storage unveils SnapServer DX, a new unified NAS and iSCSI SAN device that leverages RAID technology to eliminate the need to provision storage capacity.

Overland Storage announced a new addition to its SnapServer line on Tuesday, with what the company believes is a winning combination of features -- a storage appliance that needs no provisioning.

Dubbed SnapServer DX, the new offering from San Diego-based Overland Storage (NASDAQ: OVRL) uses a technology that the company developed based on existing standards which it calls DynamicRAID.

"We have designed DynamicRAID and the SnapServer DX to drive a fundamental shift in IT thinking and process ... there is no longer a need to ever provision storage," Jillian Mansolf, vice president of global sales and marketing at Overland Storage, said in a statement.

The SnapServer DX is a unified NAS and iSCSI SAN device that's available in either 1U or 2U configurations that can be expanded to hold up to 288 TB of storage capacity, according to Overland Storage.

Built on the company's GuardianOS platform, the SnapServer DX is 100 percent compliant with Windows Active Directory and provides complete integration with Windows, UNIX/Linux and Macintosh environments, the statement said.

Users can choose between DynamicRAID or traditional RAID at set up, and can also select among SAS, SATA Enterprise or Desktop drives. Storage capacity can be expanded using Overland Storage's SnapExpansion units.

Among DynamicRAID's claimed benefits over existing solutions, the company cited the ability to mix and match drive sizes, automatic selection of RAID type including parity, and storage pools that can grow or shrink by hot-swapping drives without interrupting business processes.

The SnapServer DX also boasts "limitless volume creation in seconds with no volume resizing or data migration required ... [and] volumes can automatically grow, or shrink independently to add storage back into the common storage pool in seconds."

SnapServer DX is available immediately. The DX1 with 2 TB of space that can expand out to 156 TB starts at $1,699, while the DX2 with 36 TB of capacity that can expand to 288 TB costs $7,699.

Stuart J. Johnston is a contributing editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @stuartj1000.